Night moon

Night Photography: Shooting the Moon

December 9th, 2010 Andrei

Your journey into night photography has reached the Moon, the main attraction of the night sky. Everyone has been at least once overwhelm by a magnificent giant full Moon. If you have your camera with you in one of these moments don’t hesitate and start shooting it because the Moon is actually moving very fast and you might loose the opportunity. In about two minutes the Moon will cover a distance equal to it’s diameter.

For night photography shooting the Moon can be quite tricky since choosing the right exposure is not an easy job. You must have in mind that the Moon at night receive almost the same amount of light as the earth on a sunny day. So basically the exposure will be roughly the same. Yet the exposure is greatly influenced by the position of the Moon. For example, if the Moon had just risen above the horizon than the haze of the atmosphere will dim the light reflected by the Moon. In this case a longer exposure will be necessary. Overexposing the Moon too much will just make it a white glow and using too slow a shutter speed will make it an oval shape. Using the spot metering mode of your camera will be of a great help in this situation.

Full Moon at Night

Full Moon at night

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Night cars

Night Photography: Lights and Movement

December 6th, 2010 Andrei

There are many situations in night photography where the sources of light will be in the frame without any possibility to avoid this. The main problem with these photos is how to expose to get the best results. If you will expose for the light sources the result will be a photo completely dark, except for the sources of light. Obviously this is not the desired result for most of the photos. A way better solution is to expose for the reflected light. For example, in the photo bellow I choose to expose for the walls around. In this situation the light source will be overexposed, but usually this is not a problem and it can look quite acceptable in the image.

Night Lights

Night lights

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Flashguns

Night Photography: Flash and Artificial Light

December 2nd, 2010 Andrei

The camera integrated flash is a powerful and useful source of light that cope with most of the situations for indoor photos where distances to the subjects are usually small. Night shots are almost always done outdoor where distances to the subjects are quite large and the integrated flash is not powerful enough to cope with these. The flash will light anything that is within a few feet of the camera but anything beyond this will not be lit with the flash. A more powerful source of light is needed and this is the flashgun, but even this may not be enough for very large distances.

Flashgun

Flashgun

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Photography equipment

Night Photography – Equipment and Exposure

November 29th, 2010 Andrei

As I said in the last post, taking top quality night photos can also be achieved with just basic equipment. Since almost all of compact cameras have an automatic night mode, they can be used for taking night photos. Many of these cameras also have a complete manual mode for advanced users where you can manually set the exposure, the f-number and the ISO speed, settings that are of great value and importance for night photography. A compact camera is good, but a DSLR is way better. The main advantage of these cameras, regarding night photography, is the quality of the image and the lower level of noise, given by the high ISO speeds.

Tripod

Tripod

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Payday Loans

November 27th, 2010 Andrei

When workers need advances on their paychecks to cover bills and expenses, it is good to know that there are payday loans online that are available to people who need them. Online payday loans make it fast and convenient to get the money needed in the short-term to pay the light bill, make the car payment, or cover any other monthly bills that are due before the next payday.

Some of the minimum requirements at most companies offering cash advances are a regular income of $1,000 a month, a minimum age of 18 years or older, and the ability to comply with the interest obligations. Convenient and stress-free, faxless payday loans simplify and consolidate the process of getting you the money you need, and getting it quickly.

This type of lending is a necessary service for those waiting for their next paycheck who need the money right away. Selecting a payday advance company that will treat you right and be fair with your finances is a good way to go. There are many such companies which can be found, and they will be happy to take care of your short-term financial needs without charging you over-the-top interest rates or enormous late penalties. This is a legitimate way to stay on top of your bills when you find yourself short on funds.

Here you can find a great company that offers easy to get payday loans: payday loans

(Disclosure: I received compensation for writing this post.)

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Night Photography

November 25th, 2010 Andrei

This series of lessons about night photography is not an absolute beginner one; an amount of photography knowledge is required for you to be able to adventure with your camera into the night. If terms like exposure, ISO, metering mode, etc. are new to you, please read my beginners tutorial first, so you can fully understand the next series of night photography lessons. Also feel free to ask me any question you might have about your journey into the night photography, I will be very happy to help you.

Night Photography

Night Photography

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Viewfinder

November 18th, 2010 Andrei

Optical Viewfinder on a Digital Compact Camera

On a digital compact camera the viewfinder represents a simple optical system that zooms at the same time as the main lens and has an optical path that runs parallel to the camera’s main lens. Being so small, viewfinders have a problem represented by framing inaccuracy. Being positioned above the actual lens, the image that you see through the optical viewfinder is different from the image that the lens projects onto the sensor. This difference is most obvious at relatively small subject distances. Most of the time, the optical viewfinder allows you to see only a percentage (80 %to 90 %) of what the sensor will capture. If you want to have a more accurate framing, use the LCD instead.

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Storage Card

November 15th, 2010 Andrei

For digital cameras, storage card is the same thing that film is for conventional cameras. They are removable devices that hold the image taken with the camera. Storage cards are evolving in the same direction as digital cameras: larger capacities (several GB) and faster write speeds to accommodate higher resolution images and shooting in RAW lower prices per MB or GB of storage smaller form factors for smaller digital cameras. There are so many sizes and formats for card storage that it is difficult to use cards across different cameras, card readers and other devices (PDA, MP3 player).

Compact Flash

Compact Flash seams to be ahead of other formats in terms of storage capacity. It is a reliable format, which is compatible with many devices. Capacities above 2.2 GB require that your camera support “FAT32″. There are 2 types for this card: Type II and I. The only difference is the thickness; Type I being the most popular for flash memory, while Type II is used by micro drives.

Micro-drives

Micro-drive represents a minute hard disk, which comes in Compact Flash Type II format and offers larger storage capacity at a cheaper cost per megabyte. Micro-dives need more battery power, create more heat and have a higher risk of failure, because they contain moving parts.

Smart Media

Smart Media is a type of card that looks bigger than Compact Flash but much thinner. Known to be less reliable, this format is gradually being phased out of the market. There are no new cameras announced to support this format of card.

Sony Memory Stick

Although Sony sets it, others, such as Laxer Media, manufacture this format. Although on the market you can find fewer and fewer cameras that use this format, the number of this card is gradually increasing. So pay a lot of attention if you buy another brand of camera, it may not support this format of card. The price for memory sticks is higher because there is less competition in the market. Several variants exist such as Sony Memory Stick with Select Function, Sony Memory Stick Pro, Sony Memory Stick Duo, and Sony Magic Gate.

Secure Digital (SD)

This format of card is characterized by a faster data transfer and a built in security function, to facilitate the secure exchange of contents, and by a copyright protection, which makes them more expensive than other cards. Similar to floppy disks, SD cards have a small write-protection switch in the side.

Multi Media Card/ Secure Multi Media Card/Reduced Size Multi Media Card (MMC/Secure MMC/RS-MMC)

Multi Media Cards have the same surface, but are 0.7 mm thinner than SD cards and they have two pins less. Hardware-wise MMC cards fit in SD card slots and many, but not all, SD devices and cameras will accept MMC cards as well. Check out the specs before you buy. Two variants are Secure MMC, similar to SD, and Reduced Size MMC.

XD Picture Card

Developed by Olympus, Fujifilm and Toshiba this format is made for small digital cameras.

Other Formats

Older formats include floppy disks and PCMCIA cards. A few models support writing on to 3-inch CD-R/RW discs. Some low-end cameras don’t have removable storage cards but instead have built-in flash RAM memory.

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Sensor Sizes

November 11th, 2010 Andrei

If we compare a typical sensor size to a 35 mm film, we realize that the sensor size of digital SLRs is typically 40% to 100% of the surface of the 35 mm film. Although they have similar number of pixels, digital cameras have smaller sensors. As a result, the pixels are smaller and the image quality is different in terms of noise and dynamic range.

Sensor Type Designation

If we talk about sensors, we refer to a “type” designation, using imperial fractions such as 1/1.8” or 2/3”, which are larger than the actual sensor diameters. The type designation is similar to a set of standard sizes, given to TV camera tubes in the 50’s. The size designation defines the outer diameter of the long glass envelope of the tube and not the diagonal of the sensor are. It has been proven that the usable area of this imaging plane is approximately two thirds of the designated size. Although it is always roughly two thirds, there is no specific mathematical relationship between the diameter of the imaging circle and the sensors size.

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Sensors linearity

November 8th, 2010 Andrei

Sensors are linear devices. If you double the amount of light, the sensor output will double, as long as the pixels are not full. If a pixel reaches full capacity, the output will be constant or clipped. Human vision is non-linear. If we double the light, the effect will be larger in low light conditions than in bright conditions, because our vision amplifies the shadows and compresses the highlight.

We can expose the sensor until the pixels are full and the brightest pixels output a value of 254, or we can halve the amount of light so that the brightest pixels output a value of 127. Either way, the result is that brightest stop uses up half of the 255 available tones and this is where human vision is least sensitive. The darkest stops, where human vision is more sensitive, can be described only by a few tones. This way, a very dark linear RAW image is created with a histogram skewed to the left.

For images to be more pleasing to the eyes, digital cameras apply a total curve to the linear row data. Applying a gamma correction of 1/2.2=0.45 will allocate more tones to the shadow area and fewer tones to the highlight areas in line with the characteristics of our vision. If we choose to work in a gamma 2.2 color space (RGB), our images  will appear perceptually uniform on a monitor. This way pasteurization can be avoided.

Cameras and row converters go beyond a gamma correction and apply more of a shaped curve to the data. This way a larger dynamic range is compressed so it can be represented on a monitor or print in a way that is pleasant to the human eye. Though, when using your camera some non linearity could appear in the darkest shadow and the brightest highlights. Also, some cameras preprocess the sensor data before the ADC.

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